Somewhere long before Wednesday’s season finale– before Eric Hosmer’s grand regression, before all of the season-ending ligament surgeries, before Royals’ fans realized with wretched horror that Bruce Chen was the ace of this ball club– before any of this, Sports Illustrated was jinxing the Kansas City Royals, whether they knew it or not.
In their annual season preview, they picked the Royals to go 82-80, good for second place in the division just behind the Detroit Tigers. They spotlighted KC as a team to watch!, poised for a remarkable turnaround. They expected big contributions from Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Danny Duffy. They anticipated a call-up of Wil Myers and that Aaron Crow would be a fantastic addition to the rotation, stating “Hochevar and Paulino are the most likely to yield their spots” because of heavy ties—both financial and developmental– to Jonathan Sanchez, Chen and Duffy.
The biggest question facing this “team on the rise”?
What sort of impact will newly acquired closer Jonathan Broxton make? Will he make a big impact or will he make a little impact? Will he return to All-Star form, or will he drown himself in a vat of smoky pulled pork and blow his elbow-bones into a thousand little pieces while attempting to drill a hole in the catcher’s mitt?
What the writer chose to ignore, however, is that he was writing about the Kansas City Royals. Continue reading →